Canada: Insurance Industry: Life insurers want to expand, demand govt redo the pension system

Toronto's Globe and Mail carries a telltale lengthy article by Tara Perkins (updated Aug20,2k9). Here's a snippet:

The industry's drive comes amid a raging debate over the problems, exacerbated by the recession and tumultuous stock markets, with how Canadians save for retirement. Aging baby boomers and the slow extinction of defined benefit plans are among the factors that have left many without sufficient financial protection for their retirement.

Down the page we soon meet these proposals by the insurance corporations greedy for profits on our earnings and our employers' contributions to our future pensions.

The life insurance industry, which is responsible for about two-thirds of defined contribution plans in Canada, has also been talking to provincial and federal governments about “private sector solutions that we think will be as effective as any government-sponsored ones,” said Frank Swedlove, president of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association.

Again, as in the USA on the healthcare plans (as blogged yesterday and earlier on reWrite frontpage), the CLHIA led by Sun Life Financial is trying the binomial-logic charade h+l+ted in my blog-entries on the USA healthcare situation.

There are not two options (as "the industry" maintains) and there is no provision in either govt (feds and provinces) for faith-based and other not-for-profits to organize co-ops with memberships that set their own pension-insurance policies within the framework of laws that woud/shoud provide this option too, while these latter woud be constantly dialoguing with "the life insurance industry" and govt -- of course.

“Some of the proposals that have been made raise some concerns for us,” Mr. Swedlove said. “Some of these proposals relate to a government-sponsored defined contribution plan, and we don't think that that's the best way to go.

Where's the freedom of association, the provision for membership co-ops as insurers of life, healthcare, and pension-addons? This does not preclude a residual govt plan for those who refuse to buy life insurance or manage their pension income thru umbrelled-megacorporations or govt, but want responsible communal institutionalization of any pension reform so that their own plan fits into the pattern alongside and in competition with the insurance-profits greed-corporations and govt; in the proposed communal pension-unions each "plan" based on a given community's irreducible worldview, woud be included in the overall mosaic of pluralization.

“We think there are opportunities to increase pension activity for Canadians by changing some of the pension rules that exist in the country.”

Changing them to favour greed-corporations, that is. Don't be deceived by the innocuous words put out by the quoted industry spokesman.

And what of that already existing one-third of the industry not in the greed-corporations lobbying umbrella? Is the Lutheran communal Thrivent active in Canada too, and is it part of the life insurance forms welcomed and sustained? [Yes, a reader comments: "In Canada, the Lutheran-based insurance society is FaithLife Financial, headquartered in Waterloo,Ontario." Hat Tip to Anonymous; see Comments.] Also, the Lutheran Brotherhood? If they're here in the nearly-erased one-third of the life insurance industry, then at least some communal life-ensurers with memberships and voters woud not only exist already here in Canada (as I guess), but they woud be already equipped to supply infrastructure for taking on the new proposed pension providers, additional to the Canadian Pension Plan based on past contributions by my pay-ins thru my employers in earlier phases of my life. CPP is adjudged by many to be inadequate for many, and this criticism surely has some truth to it -- for those who can afford to buy pension-insurance addons for their retirements.

The greed-corporations that want to become major players in "pension insurance" to the exclusion of all communities of faith and other potential membership co-ops, these greed insurance corps in their present discourse have tried to erase, to cover up, what already exists and what coud come into existence if govt were truly even-handed.

-- Economix